bears reading and rereading, not only by faculty members but byadministrative and legislative officials.The last address in the book carries the title, "The Obligationof the Historian," a Phi Beta Kappa address at Rice Institute onApril 13, 1940. The obligation of the historian, in Dr. Barker'sown words, "is to tell the truth about the particular phase of thepast that he is discussing, and as much of the truth as he can."To meet this obligation the historian encounters the difficultyof collecting evidence. Then he has "to rid his mind of bias-personal, emotional, social, economic, sectional, national"-an-other difficulty. The third difficulty is to acquire the art of nar-ration. Those historians who also teach face one other problem,namely, that of deciding how to make the subject have "a func-tional value in education."The other essays, speeches, and responses between this alphaand omega all will challenge the reader's close attention, and theforesight and interest which provided the two funds under whichthis book was published deserve great commendation.RUDOLPH L. BIESELEThe University of TexasBeyond the Cross Timbers: The Travels of Randolph B. Marcy,1812-1887. By W. Eugene Hollon. Norman (University ofOklahoma Press), 1955. Pp. xiii+270. Illustrations, bibli-ographical notes, index. $4.00.This is the narrative of the long and checkered career of anarmy officer and his family. Twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Ran-dolph B. Marcy, West Point class of 1832, accompanied by hisvivacious eighteen-year-old bride, went on his initial army assign-ment to Fort Howard, Wisconsin, in 1833. President Hayes ac-cepted the retirement, nearly fifty years later, of Brigadier Gen-eral Marcy as inspector general. The army was unspecialized butfrontier-bound in those years and Marcy's tours touched suchnoted outposts as Forts Arbuckle, Armstrong, Belknap, Dearborn,Gibson, McIntosh, Phantom Hill, Ringgold, Sill (site suggestedby him), Smith, Snelling, Towson, and Washita. His militarymeanderings were from Fort Gratoit, Michigan, to Fort Myers,Florida, and from Fort Bridger, Wyoming, to Fort Brown, Texas,

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